Today. What can I tell you about Today?! This afternoon I set to to make some cupcakes - dalmation cupcakes from Betty Crockers 'The Big book of cupcakes'. They were a disaster. Not a complete disaster as they tasted nice and the texture was lovely and light. I have sat and super-anyalysed what went wrong with them. The recipe said it made 24. I got to 24 without scraping the bowl out. I think US cupcake papers are slightly bigger than what I used. My papers were cupcake rather than fairy. The main thing I believe what happened was that the recipe was in 'American' and I translated it wrong. The measurements were in cups. This did not phase me as I had looked up the metric equivalents before I started. Afterwards I carried on looking up conversions, only to find that leading baking books give slightly different quantities. For example, I have found 35g difference in flour, 25ml difference in liquid. These quantities may seem small, but they make a difference with cupcakes.
Until I get some more clarity on these measurements, such recipes and books will only be used for inspiration and not exact recipes, which is a great shame. I shall persevere once I've picked myself up and dusted myself down. I have never had to throw out 24 cupcakes in one go! What I do like about the US cupcake recipes is that they are so vastly different and the ideas and decoration is so far removed from the traditional fairy cake 'fancies'.
I had originally planned to do another batch of cakes, maybe two and if they went really well, then perhaps a batch of biscuits. I threw the towel in after the one and only batch. I was a bit disheatened. All the other recipes that I had chosen were from the same book.
On top of that, when I was mulling over the cupcakes just after they had come out of the oven, I had a phone call. A friend of mine (a brief old flame friend) had died. I have not seen him for about 22 or 23 years, other friends had stayed in touch. He had died in a Hopsice on Wednesday of bowel cancer. I shall be taking some time to remember him.
this evening I have kept to 'safe' knitting. Yes the ASJ has had a few more ridges added to it - I'm now on ridge 71. There is no overall number of ridges I need to do, planned or worked out to do. I just like to count them.
